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| Posted By | Discussion Topic: Military action against Afghanistan unlikely for another 4-5 weeks | ||||
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| TeenWeek what's a status? | posted on 09-19-2001 @ 9:50 AM |    | |||
| O&A Board Regular Registered: Oct. 00  | US 'lacks knowledge to launch land war' By Ahmed Rashid in Lahore (Filed: 19/09/2001) AMERICAN military action against Afghanistan is unlikely to begin for another four to five weeks because of Washington's lack of knowledge and intelligence about the situation, Western sources said yesterday. European diplomats with experience of the region are urging America to limit its military campaign and restrict the use of land forces to avoid getting them bogged down in Afghanistan. "The US armed forces do not have a single soldier or officer who speaks Pushtu [the principal language of the Taliban]," said a senior Western military official. "They will have to first hire hundreds of Pushtu speakers. That shows how much they lack on the ground for this upcoming battle in Afghanistan." Pushtu, or Pashto, is the language of the Pathans and of the Taliban, who come from southern Afghanistan. Although the US army has people who speak Farsi, or Persian, is also extensively spoken in central and northern Afghanistan, bin Laden is hiding among Pushtu-speaking Afghans. According to authoritative reports, before the current crisis the CIA had no agents on the ground inside Afghanistan, and the State Department has no high level contacts with the anti-Taliban forces in northern Afghanistan. The lack of intelligence stems from Washington's decision effectively to ignore developments in Afghanistan from 1989 after Moscow withdrew its forces. Its only major intelligence source is satellite imagery, which cannot clearly differentiate between Taliban and Arab fighters nor between fighters and civilians. America is expected therefore to rely on intelligence provided by Afghanistan's neighbours and other allies such as Britain which will take time to collate and evaluate. The key to obtaining intelligence on Taliban and bin Laden troop movements and their whereabouts is the degree to which Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, which has been the principal backer of the Taliban, will co-operate with the CIA. President Pervaiz Musharraf of Pakistan has pledged full co-operation, but with the lack of trust between the ISI and the CIA, Pakistan may well limit what it passes over. European governments closely allied to America are trying to influence decision-making in the Pentagon to make Washington aware of the dangers of sending large numbers of ground forces into Afghanistan. "The danger is that Washington may be in an overkill mode, without realising the complexities of Afghanistan and the potential to destabilise the region," said a European diplomat. European defence experts and military attaches hope that America does not attempt an invasion of Afghanistan. British and Soviet invasions were defeated by Afghan guerrilla fighters in the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead America is hoping to establish military bases in Pakistan and Central Asia. From there, special forces could attack specific targets inside Afghanistan, eliminate their opponents and then return to their bases after a few days. US forces in Pakistan would be based along the border with Afghanistan in Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province, which is just 15 minutes' flying time for troop-carrying helicopters to reach many of bin Laden's bases. US special forces rather than satellite imagery would be used inside Afghanistan to guide aerial and missile strikes, the main American weapon to break up Taliban and Arab groups. The bulk of the war effort is expected to be directed at four provinces in southern Afghanistan - Kandahar, Helmand, Herat and Uruzgun - where the Taliban leadership and bin Laden will try to hide. "There will be absolutely no point in bombing the cities because they will be evacuated by the time the war starts and the cities are pretty much devastated already," said a European official. "The US may also try to capture an airfield inside Afghanistan and use it as a bridgehead for attacks in the interior of the country. But securing an airfield will mean committing some 20,000 troops just to guard the outer perimeter, which is high risk." At the same time America will have to enlist Afghans, and arm and fund them to go after the Taliban in the ravines and valleys of the mountainous and desert terrain. In northern Afghanistan the anti-Taliban United Front has already pledged 15,000 fighters to the US-led alliance. If it is given American air cover, its forces could quickly capture the major cities in the north. However, its forces have little presence in the Pathan belt in the south and it is here that the main war will be fought.  | ||||
The sky is blue | posted on 09-19-2001 @ 10:01 AM | | |||
| O&A Board Veteran Registered: Oct. 00 | Are you gay for the AP? Email me at [email protected] | ||||
| TeenWeek what's a status? | posted on 09-19-2001 @ 10:10 AM | | |||
| O&A Board Regular Registered: Oct. 00 | Just checking out news sites and finding anything that might interest other board members. Everyone is thinking the attack will be very soon. But according to this article it says we are no where near ready to attack afghanistan. Fez, I have to live up to my status right? | ||||
The sky is blue | posted on 09-19-2001 @ 10:21 AM | | |||
| O&A Board Veteran Registered: Oct. 00 | Billy Bitchcakes? Email me at [email protected] | ||||
| The Zoloft | posted on 09-19-2001 @ 10:30 AM | | |||
| Hanger-On Registered: Dec. 00 | quote: uhhhh...Well yeah! I guess that babbling female caller yesterday, well one of them anyway, was right about us having to learn the language...although I'll never admit that out loud. Thanks for passing that along TeenWeek.  "Don't ever underestimate the psycho factor in my head" -- Opie | ||||
| FeelMyFunBags | posted on 09-19-2001 @ 10:41 AM | | |||
| O&A Board Regular Registered: Jan. 01 | As far as the language barrier goes, the government is well aware of that issue, and as far as I remember they were looking for people fluent in all of the languages of the area as early as Wednesday of last week. The United States is not a stupid nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be defeated by a language...this is not English against whatever the hell they speak in their caves...this is right against wrong...and we will prevail. "I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief." -Walt Whitman USA | ||||
| The Zoloft | posted on 09-19-2001 @ 10:58 AM | | |||
| Hanger-On Registered: Dec. 00 | Oh I agree and realize it's not about the language; that's just what I took from that article. It's crystal clear what this is about. That's right we are far from stupid and right again, we will prevail!! "Don't ever underestimate the psycho factor in my head" -- Opie | ||||
| DasDoomper | posted on 09-19-2001 @ 11:47 AM | | |||
| Psychopath Registered: Jun. 01 | First off, The Zoloft - Awesome sig pic LOL! Well, I prefer they take as much time as they need to plan a sucessful mission. That means less chance of casualties for our forces. Desert Storm was a huge success due to excellent planning and intelligence. Retribution will come, and it will make them think twice about doing something like this again. DasDoomper  | ||||
| hornygoatweed I've Got A Vagina With Teeth. G.O.O.F.B.A.H.G.S. Dragoon Battalion My friends call me Weed | posted on 09-19-2001 @ 12:04 PM | | |||
| O&A Board Regular Registered: Jan. 01 | quote: I wholeheartedly agree - missions, whether they be retalitory or otherwise, are always more successful if planned well and thought through. My only hope is that nothing else like this happens in the interim.  JackDan1974 is taking classes in board behavior - please forward all problems/complaints you might have of him to my attention. Email me here or AIM me at Organic999 to apply - there still one seat available!! This message was edited by hornygoatweed on 9-19-01 @ 12:10 PM | ||||
| 2 tired 2 give N F One of the Teen Tomatoe Boys is Retarted... Guess which one I am!!! | posted on 09-19-2001 @ 12:51 PM | | |||
| Psychopath Registered: Jan. 01 | I agree too...Let's plan this out and do it right the first time... codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0" WIDTH=250 HEIGHT=250> "As I sail through the night... Let us not forget, There is hope..." | ||||
| Arthur Dent | posted on 09-19-2001 @ 1:28 PM | | |||
| O&A Board Regular Registered: Nov. 00 | Got this in an e-mail. Not sure how true it is. ------------------------------- I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done." And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing. I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters. But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country. Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban. We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that. New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide.. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time. So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West. And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants... That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right here. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a million soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the West would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else? Tamim Ansary | ||||
| BARRY MANILOW | posted on 09-19-2001 @ 1:34 PM | | |||
| O&A Board Regular Registered: Oct. 00 | While I agree that the reason that we haven't bombed anyone or will for awhile, is that the US is figuring out the best way to get those responsible; I want to point something out:quote: Ahmed Rashid, to me, is really not the broadcaster I would listen to for my info on this situatuation. Maybe for sports scores...  Thanks to Grumpy for his help with the sig | ||||
Displaying 1-12 of 12 messages in this thread. |